Pages

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Kentucky Equality Federation today expressed outrage with the new "Is My Son Gay?" a new application offered in the Android Market which claims that it can determine whether or not your son is gay in an updated version of the classic game of "20 questions."

The really frustrating thing is that some other applications and studies have indicated that your son or daughter will grow-up to be gay if he or she grows up listening to Tina Turner, Cher, Bette Midler, Madonna, or Britney Spears.

"Socially responsible companies should have standards that prevent such offensive and derogatory content," Mike Thompson, Acting President of GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), told IBTimes. "The 'Is My Son Gay?' app promotes inaccurate stereotypes about gay people and should be removed immediately," he added.

Online magazine Jezebel remarked that the app's laughable results are based on "horrible, stereotypical questions," while Instinct magazine accused it of being based on "the science of tired and offensive stereotypes."

--> Posted by a volunteer Community Blogger of Kentucky Equality Federation. This is the official blog of Kentucky Equality Federation. Posts contained in this blog may not be the official position of Kentucky Equality Federation, its volunteer officers, directors, management, supported organizations, allies or coalitions, but rather the personal opinions or views of the volunteer Community Bloggers. The opinions or views expressed in the blog are protected by Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as non-slanderous free speech; blogs are personal views or opinions and not journalistic news sites.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Andrew Cuomo (D) Governor of the state of New York who assumed office on January 01, 2011 and previously the Attorney General of the state of New York signed into law critical legislation for the aging LGBTI community.

Recognizing the importance of understanding and assisting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) aging population, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed into law legislation sponsored by Senator Thomas K. Duane (D - Manhattan) and Assemblymember Micah Kellner (D - Manhattan) (S1303/A880) which will require the New York State Office of the Aging (NYSOFA) to assess the needs of traditionally underservered elderly populations – including those in LGBT communities. The new law will also provide technical assistance and grants-in-aid to organizations that provide services to LGBT seniors.

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has made a career out of equal treatment across party lines:

As Attorney General, Cuomo was instrumental in the resignation of former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D) for misconduct. Then Attorney General Cuomo admonished the Spitzer administration for ordering the New York State Police to keep special records of then New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno's (R) whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City. At the direction of top officials of the Spitzer administration, the New York State Police created documents meant to cause political damage to then New York Senate Majority Leader Bruno (R). Governor Eliot Spitzer's (D) Chief of State has stated that they were responding to a Freedom of Information request from the Albany Times-Union in late June.

As Attorney General, Cuomo released a report to the New York Senate that cleared Bruno of any misuse of the state's air fleet, which had been alleged. The report criticized Spitzer's office for using State Police resources to gather information about Bruno's travel and releasing the information to the media.

In the wake of the revelations, Spitzer announced on March 12, 2008 that he would resign his post as Governor effective at noon of March 17, 2008, amid threats of his impeachment by the New York Senate.

"Governor Cuomo has once again shown his commitment to ensuring that all New Yorkers have equal rights and protections under the law," said Senator Duane. "This legislation is groundbreaking. For the first time, New York will recognize the unique needs of the ever growing segment of aging LGBT New Yorkers – and the services they may require in the years to come. Over the past decade, this State has gone from all but ignoring the LGBT community to enacting comprehensive lgbt hate crimes protections, providing a Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, protecting our students with strong anti-gay bullying protections in the Dignity For All Students Act, insuring our right to marry the ones we love with a Marriage Equality law, and now today taking major steps to assist elderly LGBT New Yorkers. I am proud at how far we have come in such a short amount of time."

"Despite being a rapidly growing segment of New York’s population, lgbt seniors do not receive the services they need," said Assembly Member Micah Kellner. "This community often lacks the support networks that are more commonly available to non-LGBT seniors and will sometimes be reluctant to access needed health and social services because of fear of discrimination. This bill will correct these inadequacies and ensure that current and future generations of LGBT seniors receive the care and respect that they deserve. By signing this bill, Governor Cuomo has once again illustrated his commitment to give all New Yorkers a level playing field."

Specifically, the new law requires the New York State Office for the Aging, in its annual report to the Governor and the Legislature, to include recommendations for expanding or replicating service programs already in place and applying them to traditionally underserved populations which include but are not limited to those defined by actual or perceived race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military status, sex, marital status, disability, familial status and language. The report must also articulate the specific, targeted needs of these traditionally underserved populations -- focusing on successful programs as well as addressing particular problems that need correction.

Further, the bill authorizes the Director of New York State Office for the Aging to make grants-in-aid for the purpose of providing training, outreach and education to entities providing services to LGBT senior populations.

Senator Duane added: "Like the Dignity for All Students Act, this law enumerates gender identity or expression in the list of protected categories enshrined into law. Such language is essential in granting equal rights and protections for the transgender community. But our work will not be done until we pass into the law the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). We must fight to insure its passage in 2012."

--> Posted by a volunteer Community Blogger of Kentucky Equality Federation. This is the official blog of Kentucky Equality Federation. Posts contained in this blog may not be the official position of Kentucky Equality Federation, its volunteer officers, directors, management, supported organizations, allies or coalitions, but rather the personal opinions or views of the volunteer Community Bloggers. The opinions or views expressed in the blog are protected by Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as non-slanderous free speech; blogs are personal views or opinions and not journalistic news sites.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

September 23rd Celebrated Bisexuality Day or Bi Visibility Day. The event, which was started in 1999, is an opportunity to combat myths about bisexuality and help people find the bisexual community.

While bisexuality is included as the B within the LGBT acronym, people in the bisexual community often feel that their sexual orientation is misunderstood. A lot of people believe that sexuality is binary and that people are either attracted to people of the same gender or people of the opposite gender. However, bisexual people are attracted to people of the same gender and of the opposite gender.

Bisexual invisibility is a result of many of the misconceptions about bisexuality, including:

Doubt about the existence of bisexuality

Bisexuality being seen as confusion or just a phase by people who haven’t yet figured out their true sexual orientation

Famous bisexual people in history being assumed to be lesbian or gay, rather than recognizing their bisexuality

Even within LGBT communities, some organizations do not truly support the bisexual community and their materials, events and support are all geared towards people in or seeking same-sex relationships.

People in the bisexual community often face discrimination from the straight and gay/lesbian communities. According to an essay on Biphobia by Robyn Ochs:

Bisexuals are frequently viewed by gay and lesbian-identified individuals as possessing a degree of privilege not available to gay men and lesbians, and are viewed by many heterosexuals as amoral, hedonistic spreaders of disease and disrupters of families.This “double discrimination” by heterosexuals and the gay and lesbian communities is seldom recognized or acknowledged as a force of external oppression, yet this oppression is real and has many damaging effects on bisexuals.

Bi Pride is evident in the events that are planned each year for September 23rd, as well as the participation of the bisexual community in broader LGBT pride events. The Bi Social Network’s YouTube channel also includes numerous ‘I am Visible’ videos by bisexual individuals who are speaking out about their sexual orientation.

It is important to teach our children and other members of society that they can love anyone they want. Last year, on Bi Visibility Day, I wrote about what we teach our children about love:

When I talk to my kids about love, as in romantic love, we talk about sweethearts. Not boyfriends or girlfriends. Not husbands or wives. I don’t want to teach them that heterosexuality is the default. I don’t want to teach them that marriage is the default either. When I talk about their future, I talk about the possibility of them having a sweetheart, who could be a man or a woman. I want them to know that they can love women or men or women and men. I want to teach them that before society teaches them something else. I want to teach them that long before they are at the stage of feeling romantic love and perhaps feeling that their love is wrong or misplaced if they love people of the same gender or if they love people of both genders.

Ensuring that our children understand the options that are available to them and the options that are available to others is critical to building a society that accepts and values diversity.

A new study from researchers at Northwestern University has shown that men identifying as bisexual do in fact respond sexually to both men and women. This will be unsurprising to bisexual men and indeed the wider population, but it is significant because a previous and much cited 2005 Northwestern study concluded that evidence for male bisexuality was lacking and that bisexual-identifying men may in fact just be closeted homosexuals.

From the New York Times:

In the new study, published online in the journal Biological Psychology, the researchers relied on more stringent criteria for selecting participants. To improve their chances of finding men aroused by women as well as men, the researchers recruited subjects from online venues specifically catering to bisexuals.

They also required participants to have had sexual experiences with at least two people of each sex and a romantic relationship of at least three months with at least one person of each sex.

[...]

In both [the 2005 study and the latest investigation], men watched videos of male and female same-sex intimacy while genital sensors monitored their erectile responses. While the first study reported that the bisexuals generally resembled homosexuals in their responses, the new one finds that bisexual men responded to both the male and female videos, while gay and straight men in the study did not.

Both studies also found that bisexuals reported subjective arousal to both sexes, notwithstanding their genital responses. “Someone who is bisexual might say, ‘Well, duh!’” said Allen Rosenthal, the lead author of the new Northwestern study and a doctoral student in psychology at the university. “But this will be validating to a lot of bisexual men who had heard about the earlier work and felt that scientists weren’t getting them.”

--> Posted by a volunteer Community Blogger of Kentucky Equality Federation. This is the official blog of Kentucky Equality Federation. Posts contained in this blog may not be the official position of Kentucky Equality Federation, its volunteer officers, directors, management, supported organizations, allies or coalitions, but rather the personal opinions or views of the volunteer Community Bloggers. The opinions or views expressed in the blog are protected by Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as non-slanderous free speech; blogs are personal views or opinions and not journalistic news sites.

An interesting article appears in RD Magazine written by Candace Chellew-Hodge:

The Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, and to some extent the American Baptists, accept LGBT people in leadership and lay roles. There are even rumblings in the United Methodist Church of pending change in their policies that declare homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching,” while, according to Joanna Brooks: “an openly gay Mormon man named Mitch Mayne ha[s] been asked (or “called,” in Mormon parlance) to serve as a leader in an LDS congregation in San Francisco.”

All of these changes have been made because LGBT people were faithful to an institution that has historically despised and rejected them. Progress comes from making changes within, not protesting outside the doors.

completely understand the mindset of those who would question my membership in a club where many of its members wish to eliminate me altogether. I feel exactly the same way about gay Republicans. I can’t fathom why a gay or lesbian person—even if they were conservative in their economic views—would lay claim to the Republican Party. The GOP has historically rejected the full inclusion of LGBT people and within the last few decades has become vehemently anti-gay, fielding a group of presidential hopefuls that have clear anti-gay views.

While I don’t quite get gay Republicans, I understand why they remain loyal to the GOP. They understand, as I do, that you cannot change a homophobic institution without working from the inside. Gay Republicans have already helped our community make great strides. It was the Log Cabin Republicans who filed a lawsuit against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell back in 2004, challenging its constitutionality which led to last year’s federal judge ruling that DADT “violates the rights of gay military members to free speech, due process and open association.”

Just this past week, DADT was finally repealed, allowing gay and lesbian servicemembers to serve openly. The entire LGBT community worked for this repeal, but it was our brothers and sisters in the Log Cabin Republicans who got the legal ball rolling.

..........

Despite that clear rejection by the Tea Party, a gander at GOProud’s website reveals many far right talking points including touting Social Security as “a Ponzi scheme” and rejecting “Obamacare.”

Both fundamentalist LGBT Christians and GOProuders seem to be a bit on the self-loathing side, not so much interested in working for change from within, but instead submitting themselves to the rules and traditions already in place that ultimately go against their best interest.

--> Posted by a volunteer Community Blogger of Kentucky Equality Federation. This is the official blog of Kentucky Equality Federation. Posts contained in this blog may not be the official position of Kentucky Equality Federation, its volunteer officers, directors, management, supported organizations, allies or coalitions, but rather the personal opinions or views of the volunteer Community Bloggers. The opinions or views expressed in the blog are protected by Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as non-slanderous free speech; blogs are personal views or opinions and not journalistic news sites.

Monday, September 5, 2011

The battle for marriage equality in California (Prop 8) is back in the hands of the California Supreme Court. Do the sponsors of Proposition 8 have a legal right, or standing, to defend the state law and appeal a federal judge's ruling striking it down when California's Governor and Attorney General refuse to do so?

The stakes are high.

The federal judges, in their request to the California Supreme Court (because the California Supreme Court is the sole interpreter of California law), highlighted a key concern in the case -- that a Governor and an Attorney General could "effectively veto the initiative" by refusing to defend it in court.

If the California Supreme Court sides with Proposition 8 sponsors, it would propel the legal battle forward, with the case then going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A group of local governments, led by Santa Clara County, have urged the California Supreme Court to rule against the right of ballot measure sponsors to defend a state law, saying it would "create legal uncertainty for cities and counties" to turn that power over to private citizens.

We are thankful that Kentucky Constitutional Amendments must first pass the Kentucky House and Senate before going to the people for a vote. In Kentucky, propositions do not exist and "the people" cannot veto legislation passed by the House, Senate, and signed by the Governor effectively making them obsolete.

The Kentucky Constitution protects us from such propositions (someone with a pen who can get enough signatures to place something for a vote directly to the people and make it a Constitutional Amendment); this is a dangerous practice, several states who allow these propositions (also called the People's Veto) have overrode the state Legislative and Governor and made marriage equality illegal again in their State.

In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, before a Constitutional Amendment can be proposed to "the people," it must first pass the Kentucky House and Senate.

The fate of the legal battle over California's ban on gay marriage no longer turns on the constitutional rights of same-sex couples to wed -- at least for now.

Instead, the latest chapter in the ongoing drama over gay nuptials rests on an arcane but critical legal procedure that dazzles legal scholars, torments first-year law students and forms the DNA of most every lawsuit that unfolds in the nation's courts.

On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments over how that procedure, known as legal "standing," applies in the ongoing tussle over Proposition 8, the 2008 voter-approved law that restored the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Specifically, the justices will consider whether sponsors of Proposition 8 have a legal right, or standing, to defend the state law and appeal a federal judge's ruling striking it down when California's governor and attorney general refuse to do so.

The stakes are high. If the Supreme Court concludes that Proposition 8 backers do not have the right to appeal the ruling, it could slam the door on their efforts to keep the law in place and pave the way for same-sex weddings to resume in California. And if the Supreme Court sides with Proposition 8 sponsors, it would propel the legal battle forward, with the case widely expected to ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Experts say it is anybody's guess what the state Supreme Court will do.

The Proposition 8 case has taken a tortured path back to the state Supreme Court, which upheld the law after it was approved by a 52 to 48 percent vote. Last summer, after conducting an unprecedented trial in federal court, former San Francisco Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker struck down the law, finding it violated the federal equal protection rights of same-sex couples.

But Proposition 8 sponsors appealed Walker's ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on their own because state officials, including Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris, agreed with Walker's conclusion. The attorney general ordinarily defends challenges to state laws, but in this rare case opted to drop any appeals.

The 9th Circuit then asked the state Supreme Court to address whether California law permits backers of ballot initiatives to defend them in such situations. Under ordinary circumstances, courts require a direct stake in the outcome of a legal controversy to qualify for legal standing, a standard muddied in the Proposition 8 case by the usual role of state officials to handle the defense of state laws.

The federal judges, in their request, highlighted a key concern in the case -- that a Governor and an Attorney General could "effectively veto the initiative" by refusing to defend it in court.

A group of local governments, led by Santa Clara County, have urged the Supreme Court to rule against the right of ballot measure sponsors to defend a state law, saying it would "create legal uncertainty for cities and counties" to turn that power over to private citizens.

--> Posted by a volunteer Community Blogger of Kentucky Equality Federation. This is the official blog of Kentucky Equality Federation. Posts contained in this blog may not be the official position of Kentucky Equality Federation, its volunteer officers, directors, management, supported organizations, allies or coalitions, but rather the personal opinions or views of the volunteer Community Bloggers. The opinions or views expressed in the blog are protected by Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as non-slanderous free speech; blogs are personal views or opinions and not journalistic news sites.

This is the official blog of Kentucky Equality Federation. Posts contained in this blog may not be the official position of Kentucky Equality Federation, its volunteer officers, directors, management, supported organizations, allies or coalitions, but rather the personal opinions or views of the volunteer Community Bloggers. The opinions or views expressed in the blog are protected by Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as non-slanderous free speech; blogs are personal views or opinions and not journalistic news sites.

"Many people and groups are victims of discrimination. Some are discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, sexual identity, race, gender, veteran status, or political identification (or lack thereof). Discrimination takes many forms, and it is necessary that the victims of such treatment strive for a better world where all groups, orientations, identities, creeds, and political groups can achieve equality." - Josh Koch, Vice President of Policy and Public Relations.

This is the official blog of Kentucky Equality Federation. Posts contained in this blog may not be the official position of Kentucky Equality Federation, its volunteer officers, directors, management, supported organizations, allies or coalitions, but rather the personal opinions or views of the volunteer Community Bloggers. The opinions or views expressed in the blog are protected by Section 1 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as non-slanderous free speech; blogs are personal views or opinions and not journalistic news sites.